What do we know about the MIJF?

[erin]

Can this discussion be used to pool our information on the MIJF? I don't mean digging up dirt - I mean facts about their and governance and management structure.
Just imagine a world where people like the jazz fringe staff and professional arts administrator/managers were paid to run the international jazz fest! They would be able to hire a publicist who could publicize and promote Australian jazz. Jazz could start having a positive presence in the Australian media. I for one would love to work for the festival in a paid position to find out just what the hell they are doing in there and try and steer things in the right direction. I'm sure that i'm not alone.

Has anyone ever seen a job advertisement for the MIJF? -All the website has is that they are keen on volunteers.
Does anyone know what paid positions are actually available at the MIJF?
They appear to have a marketing guy who responds to emails and presumably they have a general manager.
The company seems to be a closed circuit.

Melbourne Jazz are registered as a Charitable institution and have Deductible Gift Recipient status. Does anyone know who is on the Board of Directors apart from Dadon and Tortoni?
Check out en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Dadon
It seems that Dadon's heart (and his wallet) is in the right place when it comes to jazz in Australia. Here we have the sort of donor that most underfunded arts organisations would kill for.

The problem here may be that the money has not been separated from the control.
Places like Australian Ballet and Oz Opera have structures in place to receive such donations. They then treat the donors like gods, making them VIP's to all events and regularly inviting them to closed rehearsals so that they can get 'behind the scenes'. They never, however, let them have any artistic control.
The fact that there are people out there with million dollar tax bills that love jazz is a VERY good thing - provided that we have some infrastructure in place to allow them to donate, pay less tax, and feel included.

A lot of discussion so far has blamed the people at the top. This may be justifiable but there is a chance that the problem at the jazz fest is a middle management and/or a lower one. I work in the same building as the MIJF office and I must say I haven't been greatly impressed from what I have seen of the staff/volunteers.

It is interesting to note that both Tortoni and Dadon have very closely linked business activities in the corporate sector. See:
www.moneymanagement.com.au/Articles/Toro-gives-new-fund-an-Australian-flavour_0c052d07.html
This corporate interest was significantly reflected in the general vibe, lineup and venue choice of the most recent festival. The opening night tickets were going for a whopping $2500 a table or $250 per person. The whole affair had quite a corporate feel to it with more of an emphasis on networking than celebrating jazz. See the 'MJF Launch: A view from the stage' discussion.

So... do we leave the MIJF to themselves and create something better (or build on something we have already e.g Fringe, Stonnington, Co-op)
or do we try and infiltrate the MIJF so that the jazz community has some say in the festival.

One more thing. Does the jazz fest have a mission statement or something to that effect? Does anyone know what it is? Is it:
To improve the australian jazz scene?
To improve international business relations?
To be a major tourist event attracting thousands of international visitors to melbourne?(this would make sense given their major funding from Tourism Victoria.)

If we knew what they are aiming for maybe we could measure their performance.

Help, please....

[isaacs]

IMHO Erin's is the best post on this forum by a country mile as far as taking a positive approach to changing things that need to be changed. Congratulations. Read and learn the destructors who only know how to whinge, knock and bitch.

[ironguts]

I couldn't agree more Mark.

Erin, can't answer your questions but did have an interesting chat with Tortoni the other night, he was more than willing to talk and answer any question, so I asked.

In short, the way I got it is that Albert Der has been in complete control over the last couple of years due to his large personal financial input. Each time there were choice made by the board he could over ride them on the grounds "I'm paying for it". This is most certainly not a healthy situation though as you say, the money is much needed. AD was of course not getting paid for his position. Mr Tortoni did not actually say if or what he will be paid but did say that "this position has not been paid for in the past". To what I took to mean was he will be paid.
Now aj pointed out to me as I beat him at golf that he was paid as Artistic Director at th MIJF so only Al's position hasn't been.
Mr Tort also spoke on the matter of conflict of interest. He said that Bennetts could not be booked any more that it already is and in fact he would like to see it used less as the stress on staff etc was evident. To me this doesn't really answer said situation as he will benefit financially from the use of his club, but this is for the board I guess.
He did say too that the funding money was for International input into the festival and that he thought the Fringe should be supported more and they could work together on this which is very positive.
All in all I came away feeling better about the situation, though that could be political nouse on his part, not sure.
Will try to remember the rest of the conversation, I had a few beers.

[ironguts]

Couple of other things,

Yes it is on next year, Mr Tortoni just wanted to go for a January festival, punter has some views on that.

I get the vibe that Alby gave Mr Tort the job and could do that because of his 'financial' power, so no need to advertise. Just my guess on that. Remember Alby did say he will retain "ownership" of the Bells, powerful guy, he even invented an award one year for his mate.

Micheal did talk of more collaboration between international and local artists.

aj might be able to talk about board structure.

[andrewh]

I agree that erin does list a number of the problems with trying to get to grips with the MIJF monolith, but really all it is is just a more measured despair than the so-called knockers, whingers and bitches - but despair nonetheless.

My favourite bit of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Dadon is the bit on the Talk page that reads, "I am afraid it is almost certain that Mr. Albert Dadon composed this page himself." So no surprises there.

Anyway, in partial response to one of Erin's questions, the first time the MIJF Board was listed on its website was in December 2002, when its members were the following:

Michael Tortoni (Chairman)
Bernard Galbally (Vice Chairman)
Albert Dadon (Treasurer, Chairman-Elect)
David Pike (Secretary)
Paul Grabowsky
John Haddad
Nick Haddad
Ron Male
Zac Teichmann
Graeme Weideman

At that stage the staff were listed as Adrian Jackson (artistic director), Gideon Brazil (festival co-ordinator) and Christina Hicks (administrative assistant), and the festival (directed by Adrian Jackson) ran from 17-26 January, 2003.

By April 2003 the board had altered slightly to the following:

Albert Dadon (Chairman)
Bernard Galbally (Vice Chairman)
Michael Tortoni
David Pike (Secretary)
Paul Grabowsky
John Haddad
Nick Haddad
Ron Male (Treasurer)
Zac Teichmann
Jane Good
Michel Koopman

Adrian Jackson was the listed staff member.

The names of the board members were altered subtly during 2004, and in about November 2004 they were listed as follows:

Albert Dadon (chairman)
Michel Koopman
Helen Burbery
John Haddad
Nick Haddad
Zac Teichmann
Michael Tortoni
Shane Pettiona
Paul Grabowsky
Jane Good

Carlo Pagnotta was listed as Artistic Director, Odilla O'Boyle was listed as Executive Officer.

Since early 2005 the Board has no longer been listed on the website. Around the time of Umbria Jazz - Melbourne 05 (May 2005) the website listed three staff members (General Manager: Kate Ben-Tovim; Marketing & Communications Manager: Odilla O'Boyle; and Festival Assistant: Janel Yau).

The Crown Melbourne Jazz Festival website was launched in early 2007. Its website made no mention of Board or staff members besides the Artistic Director, Albert Dadon.

Ditto the current website.

[mim]

Go Erin! Haven't read it yet, but nice long post. Was wondering when you were gonna chip in. Will get to it after this beer.

x

[aj]

Thanks andrew, that's about as much info as I could have offered ; I don't know who is on the board now, or if the structure has changed in any way since I was there. I know that Romina Calabro is the manager, she seems to do her job very well............whatever they pay her isn't enough! (Some things don't change).

[Peterk]

May 7, 2008 10:24:46 GMT 10 isaacs said:

IMHO Erin's is the best post on this forum by a country mile as far as taking a positive approach to changing things that need to be changed. Congratulations. Read and learn the destructors who only know how to whinge, knock and bitch.

Actually Mark some of the people who are critical are the same people who are working their arses off to add to the scene through involvement in the Jazz Fringe, MIBEM, Antripodean Collective, Make It Up Club... need I go on?
I agree that Erin's post is a great contribution but it's not destructive to ask what the fuck is going on here in the way other posters have?
I'm interested to know what you think about the issues that have been raised by "destructors" like andrewh.
You're saying we're just whingers and knockers but you aren't actually offering any kind of opinion of your own (other than that we're whingers and knockers)

[isaacs]

I'm not talking about anybody in particular or even solely about any particular issue. You seem to know who I was talking about...There is a general tendency - that we're all subject to - to point a fuming flamethrower at baby/bathwater rather than working out how to empower oneself to be a part of moving forward to a fresher tomorrow. I thought Erin's post was more than waving hands angrily and then sitting on them, it showed a positive strategy, even in its tone. As far as my own "opinion" I am selective about what issues I will wade into, right now I'm engaged with The Permanent Underground.

[vickibonet]

May 7, 2008 9:59:00 GMT 10 erin said:

Can this discussion be used to pool our information on the MIJF? I don't mean digging up dirt -

Has anyone ever seen a job advertisement for the MIJF? -All the website has is that they are keen on volunteers.
Does anyone know what paid positions are actually available at the MIJF?
They appear to have a marketing guy who responds to emails and presumably they have a general manager.
The company seems to be a closed circuit.

Melbourne Jazz are registered as a Charitable institution and have Deductible Gift Recipient status. Does anyone know who is on the Board of Directors apart from Dadon and Tortoni?
Check out en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Dadon
It seems that Dadon's heart (and his wallet) is
The fact that there are people out there with million dollar tax bills that love jazz is a VERY good thing - provided that we have some infrastructure in place to allow them to donate, pay less tax, and feel included.
...
A lot of discussion so far has blamed the people at the top. This may be justifiable but there is a chance that the problem at the jazz fest is a middle management and/or a lower one. I work in the same building as the MIJF office and I must say I haven't been greatly impressed from what I have seen of the staff/volunteers.
...
Help, please....

I would really hate someone who happened to work in the same building as me to be judging my work on a public forum. How can you possibly know what they do and where they do it by being in the same building? The way people work these days i.e. from home, on the train, in cafes etc. - I'm interested to know what you weren't impressed by?

I'm glad you raised this topic though. A year or so back I tried to find out more about how people were nominated to the MIJF board but got nowhere. The lack of transparency and accountability is not a good thing in my view. Especially if they are registered as a charitable organisation, they should be accountable and transparent re governance, equal opportunity etc.

Mind you, over the years I've worked (briefly) for some really dodgy NGOs (charities) some high profile ones who raise millions from the public and should be hung, drawn and quartered for some of their way shoddy, bordering on corrupt practices.

[aj]

Minor point : MIJF isn't a charitable organisation, they have tax-deductibility for donations by virtue of being listed on the Fed Govt's Register Of Cultural Organisations.

[ironguts]

You know punter, it really pisses me off the way some people here pontificate about not being negative when in fact they do nothing positive anyhow. Of course I'm not talking about anyone in particular or even solely about any particular issue.

[andrewh]

I shall try to rein in the destructory side of my personality.

The Melbourne International Jazz Festival is run by a public company, limited by guarantee, called Melbourne Jazz Ltd. This company was until October 2006 called Melbourne International Jazz Festival Ltd. I guess the name change might have been in order to reflect the wider nature of the company's interests (eg the Bell Awards nomination form asked for entries to be sent to Melbourne Jazz Ltd), or to allow for flexibility with name-changes in the festival (eg Umbria Melbourne Jazz used to be a registered business name). It's reflected in the latest web address – www.melbournejazz.com, not www.mijf.org.

You can see Melbourne Jazz Ltd on the Register of Cultural Organisations (as mentioned by aj) at tinyurl.com/5lt5xc - it's a PDF document.

According to the entry for Melbourne Jazz Limited in the Australian Business Register (accessible at tinyurl.com/65ma6n), the company is in fact a charitable institution (i.e. one that is established and run to advance or promote a charitable purpose).

The current directors of Melbourne Jazz Ltd are registered as: Albert Dadon (also listed as CEO), Michael Tortoni, Jane Good, Alan Howe and Philip Weinman.

As it is a public company, anyone who wants to know more (for example) about its structure, financial returns, etc, is perfectly entitled to enquire - obviously at a cost. You can find information on how to do this, and portals via which to retrieve documentation relating to the company, at tinyurl.com/6ruala.

Is knowledge likely to empower in this situation? I doubt it. Given the set-up, there is no legal requirement for the company to be any more transparent than it is, in terms of advertising positions vacant or anything like that. You and I cannot become shareholders; you and I cannot affect its decision-making or its set-up. It's funny though: I don't question for a second the level of commitment and energy of the people who make up this Board, less yet the financial contribution they make to make it possible. It's just that, if Melbourne is to have an "International Jazz Festival", how much better might it be? How much better might their energy and commitment (and, let's face it, money) be directed? I guess one of isaacs' points is that sniping from the sidelines is less likely to change the Festival than it is to guarantee the demise of the Festival – through the loss of government funding. Straddled with utterly no artistic nous whatsoever, the people responsible for shovelling out "Major Events" money, or even the Australia Council funding, will see the whiff of a scandal/protest/argument they don't quite understand, write the whole thing off as flawed, and give up on a bad job. But to my limited imagination I struggle to see what other – genuinely realistic and practical – options are open, other than to articulate concerns and frustrations on a forum such as this. Or, like ironguts has done, to take these questions to the people themselves. There's such enormous potential there, tragically misdirected, negligently untapped.

The problem is that this music, in a scene the size of this, is always effectively for sale to any hobbyist with a swathe of cash who comes along and wants a plaything. And because the size and fickleness of audiences, the powerlessness (and lack of inspiration) of record companies, the battle for profit margin within venues, and the great personal cost involved in developing an original voice ensure that the available money is always less than what people think it should be, or hope it might be, it becomes dangerous to dare stop being grateful to the moneyed people with the "jazz hobby". But the truth is that if most of us had a bundle of cash to spend on jazz (or, indeed, anything) we'd want to keep a fair degree of control over how it got spent. In this case, the people with the money are the structure.

So, erin's question,

May 7, 2008 9:59:00 GMT 10 erin said:

So... do we leave the MIJF to themselves and create something better (or build on something we have already e.g Fringe, Stonnington, Co-op) or do we try and infiltrate the MIJF so that the jazz community has some say in the festival.

The latter is, by the structure of the Festival, virtually impossible. Of course we already have much that is far better – the Fringe, Wangaratta, Stonnington – it's just, whichever way you look at it, an entity called the Melbourne International Jazz Festival is always going to be seen by the public at large as representing the jazz scene generally and what it stands for, and despite ourselves it will always in some measure carry the hopes and aspirations of those for whom jazz music is both life and livelihood.

[isaacs]

May 9, 2008 5:32:25 GMT 10 andrewh said:

I guess one of isaacs' points is that sniping from the sidelines is less likely to change the Festival than it is to guarantee the demise of the Festival – through the loss of government funding. Straddled with utterly no artistic nous whatsoever, the people responsible for shovelling out "Major Events" money, or even the Australia Council funding, will see the whiff of a scandal/protest/argument they don't quite understand, write the whole thing off as flawed, and give up on a bad job. But to my limited imagination I struggle to see what other – genuinely realistic and practical – options are open, other than to articulate concerns and frustrations on a forum such as this. Or, like ironguts has done, to take these questions to the people themselves. There's such enormous potential there, tragically misdirected, negligently untapped.

My comments about the way certain people have gone about expressing their dissent or concerns here (not just about the MIJF issue but also re the The Permanent Underground) have been to do in the first place with tone. In the second place with an almost lynch mob mentality that sees people as guilty until proven innocent (or their books as bad before being read) and too often substitutes unsubstantiated narrative in place of a fact-based analysis.

Call me a "girl" again by all means ironguts, but I think tone is particularly important when discussing these kinds of major issues publicly and that's why I remarked positively on erin's post and obviously andrewh's posts fall into the same category.

Having created this forum I'd like to see it at times play a more useful role in the jazz (and wider arts) community rather than being little more than a graffiti wall in some kind of Dadaist cyber-playground. Arts bureaucrats who are taking decisions on the kinds of issues raised here (eg about Melbourne Jazz) could be directed to this forum to read the concerns. Make no mistake, many of them visit already and take measure.

I'm not suggesting that we have to be on our "best behaviour". That's bullshit and would marginalise ironguts for a start. But all the same, when we are challenging power structures, surely it wouldn't hurt to cut out some of what I (probably generously) called "sniping" and combine not just forthright but well-informed criticism with good conduct as erin and andrewh have done?

I don't know if anyone agrees with me on this. But I stand by my opinion and putting it forward is intended as my positive contribution for what it's worth.

[gator]

I think most would agree with you in regard to the way discussion is conducted Mark. But tone is surely a subjective issue.

I think "The Permanent Underground" has a tone as well - a particularly plaintive tone which again, I feel, in terms of both intention and content is not really capitalizing on the opportunity for presenting a coherent plan... thats how I feel after reading the book. I think I mentioned before that while any of us can see the benefits of such a publication in terms of the discussion it raises , the content and agendas that actually motivate such a book should be open to question.

I dont buy into the idea that if you dont actually have answers of your own, that that automatically strips you of the right to criticize- after all - part of the process of editorial style critique, comment , whatever you want to call it , is to induce responses that echo the intensity of the comment with equal passion/ rigour/ insight. Seems to be working fine to me....